For fees ranging from $25 to $75, visitors to the North Dallas facility are ushered into a protected space that can be decorated like a living room, kitchen or office. They are then invited to break up the furnishings with a baseball bat, hammer or blunt object of their choice.

“There’s a lot of people who are stressed out when the economy’s good; but when it’s bad, there’s an increased frustration out there,” said owner Donna Alexander. “We’ve been getting a lot of business.”

Alexander said she conceived the idea of the Anger Room as a 16-year-old living in Chicago.

“I saw a lot of fighting in my neighborhood, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there was someplace where people could have a way to get these things out.”

In 2008, while she was working at a Dallas restaurant, she let friends and family try out the idea in her garage. She opened for business about six months ago.

Citing privacy concerns, she asked that Anger Room’s exact location not be made public. But it is safe to say it’s located near one of the chief exporters of anger in the region — North Central Expressway.

Before the customer arrives, the staff furnishes a so-called “destruction room” using surplus material donated by other businesses or just found by the side of the road.

Besides setting up the room to look like a home or office, staff members can customize it for an additional fee. A popular option is the “glass special.”

“I’m not sure people enjoy breaking the glass so much — I think they just like the noise,” said employee James Pruitt.

Staff members have catered to other special requests — one customer wanted balloons, another (for reasons employees could never figure out) wanted the room filled with plastic bags. In December, someone brought in a Christmas tree and some gift-wrapped boxes.

“The holidays do seem to be a time of stress,” Alexander said.

Employees said customers tend to be 20 to 35 years old and evenly divided between the sexes. Men tend to express frustrations about their jobs; women about their personal lives. Children, pregnant women and pets are barred.

The business’s website — angerroom.com — includes a disclaimer noting that the business is for entertainment and not therapy.

But it has critics.

“If a person wants to go in and bust up things for fun, well, OK. But I’m not a fan of that as anger management,” said Scott Lennox, a counselor in behavioral health at Baylor All Saints Medical Center of Fort Worth.

He said people with anger issues may think of the Anger Room as an effective way to deal with them. “The fact is, they’re not going to solve their issues and there’s no one there who’s clinically trained,” Lennox said.

Don Hafer, director of behavioral health at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, said the concept — called “catharsis” — enjoyed popularity among psychologists in the 1960s.

“They’d have an old chair in the office that people could take a tennis racket to. It didn’t work,” he said. “For people with those sorts of problems, it’s not going to release anger, it’s going to make it a habit.”

C.J. Johnson, the Anger Room’s manager, didn’t dispute the criticism but said the staff emphasizes to patrons that the business is intended only as a fun way to deal with everyday irritations.

“We don’t suggest it as actual therapy. If people really have problems, we would suggest to them that they get professional help,” Johnson said.

Still, owning the Anger Room is not like running a hot dog stand, Alexander said.

It took her almost three years to find a landlord who would agree to rent her space. And she has to carry about $2 million in liability insurance.

Nonetheless, business has been good.

Staff members say the room has been rented for bachelorette and fraternity parties, and it has attracted customers from as far away as Switzerland and from both U.S. coasts.

“We had one guy call and ask how he could get here directly from D/FW Airport,” Johnson said.

The business has been mentioned on ABC News and in The New York Times and the Huffington Post. Alexander said officials from another TV network have expressed interest in taping a reality show there.

Alexander said she plans to grow the business, expanding into a larger space and licensing the idea in other cities. So far, she said, she has received 180 inquiries.

One of the customers on a recent day was Taylor Mitchell, a 22-year-old Texas Tech student, whose mother bought him a 15-minute session for $45.

He signed a three-page release and donned gloves, a hard-hat and goggles.

He disappeared into the destruction room and attacked a chair, a laptop, an egg crate and a sports trophy with a bat, a hammer and — later — a piece of lumber from the pulverized chair. The hammer slammed against the walls, while hard rock blasted over the loudspeaker. Pieces of the wood went flying.

For Anger Room staff, it’s all part of a day’s work. While Mitchell attacked the chair, Johnson leaned against a doorway talking nonchalantly on a cellphone. On the other side of the inch-thick observation window, an employee sat at the reception desk working at a laptop. Alexander talked to a man who wandered in to offer his services as a window washer.

After taking a business card from the window washer, Alexander expressed admiration that Mitchell was using up his allotted 15 minutes.

“Usually after a couple of minutes, they’re out of breath,” she said. “It’s rare someone purchases a 25-minute session, and when they do, they never go the full 25 minutes. Never. I think if they did, we would ask if we could recommend the name of some psychological help.”

Mitchell emerged from the destruction room breathing heavily and smiling, with a slight cut on his cheek caused by flying debris.

“I feel great,” he said. “It was always about fun — and maybe a little about frustrations.”

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